mad girl's love song
by DaisyJune
Summary: Jo Harvelle experiences Heaven and Heaven experiences Jo Harvelle. At least she's not in Hell. Thank the goddamn Lord.


** notes** One major divergence from canon_: Jo knew John and Bill were partners on Bill's last hunt._ This is part one of two.

**•**

**I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;  
I lift my lids and all is born again. **

- Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song"

**•**

Her coffee tastes faintly of copper. Her fingers tremble while driving. She smells sweat, propane and ashes in a field of bluebonnets. There is a pain in her abdomen every morning, raging and hot, but it goes away before she peels open her eyes. She begins a count on her Wagoneer ceiling the passing days, but she always forgets the number the next sunrise and all her pen marks disappear except the name she scribbled down:Joanna.

_You're name is Joanna Beth Harvelle. You are looking for your mother Ellen, your father Bill, and your best friend Ash,_ she reminds herself in the shower, washing her unmarked body. Hesitantly, she tacks on, _you're dead, Jo, and you _are not_ in Hell. _

Thank the goddamn Lord.

**•**

She wakes up in a cornfield.

Jo hears her name shouted joyously somewhere in the jungle of tall, flaking stalks. The air is humid and abuzz. Things are dizzy, sweet, and she feels a low heat in her belly—like arousal.

"JO!" It is a teen-age boy's voice, not yet a man.

Spinning around, she picks a direction and struggles through the field. "Yeah? Here!"

A whooping laugh sends her reeling to her right and the ground seems to swell like her heart. The boy yells, "Come on, Joanna! Your mama will kill me if I lose you!"

"You haven't lost me, Tommy, I—"and she's silenced with a wet, sloppy kiss that's haphazardly stamped on her lips by a boy who she knows will be tall and blue-eyed without even taking a peek. Jo remembers this. She can recall the tang of sweat on his upper lip, the ant bites itching on the backs of her knees, how much her mother liked Tommy, how much Tommy liked her, and what happened next.

It's 2000, and Jo is fifteen. Thomas M. Faulkner is seventeen with a love for mathematics, George Straight, basketball, and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer. _His grandmother believes their house is haunted, but that's all inconsequential when he's touching her like _that_, right _there_, and she's feeling warm and dangerous. They find a spot large enough for them to fit onto the ground, his lanky frame folding against the plants, curling around her, and Jo's squirming beneath him to find control. They're both clumsy, but that doesn't seem to register to either teen as they fumble their way through clothing, and sweet spots, and murmured nothings.

She stays with him for a while.

**•**

Jo walks the same dirt path home she took after her tryst with Tommy and knows her jean shorts and cotton shirt are smeared with dust. She's swinging her boots by the laces and humming a Bob Dylan tune. The soil is dry and cracking; her bare feet skip over the diminutive canyons colored gold, her hair colored gold, the clouds colored gold in the dipping sun and all she can feel is bright pride slipping over her shoulders.

She thinks she did pretty well for her first time—at least Tommy seemed to like it. It didn't hurt as bad as the girls at school had whispered in the locker room before gym, down to their skivvies and jutting out their chests in womanly smugness, only the giggles that littered their conversation told of their real age and maturity. Those girls talked about how their boyfriends tried to be gentle. That sex was just the next step in their loving relationship, and just how romantic the whole thing was (something about red roses or promises rings or some shit like that).

Tommy isn't Jo's boyfriend, not really, he is just a nice guy with a house that is haunted and cornflower blue irises that takes in what Jo knows isn't all too pretty and _likes it_. She thinks her hair is too wild, her body flat with no shapely swells or dips, her cheeks too puffy like a little girl's, teeth too large for her mouth, and eyes too wide, too innocent. She has the pervading notion she looks like an annoying, scrappy kid on the outside and if someone peeled her chest wide open and stared at her insides they'd spot she is part freak, too.

She'd been a freak since her daddy died out in California five years earlier, or maybe she'd been a freak since birth. Who knows?

The familiar painful feelings sober Jo right up and she's abruptly thrust right back in the melancholia that held her before. Those lines of thought had already been drawn once before, on Earth, in real time, and these present moments, these rambles were just a repeat of that day.

The reality is Tommy was married last she heard and out of Nebraska. The path she walked on no longer existed as it washed away, along with a couple of farms, in a flash flood two summers later. Jo would sleep with a couple other boys, then a special one, and then a small handful of men whose names she'd forget once her vehicle hit 80 mph. She had self respect, sure, but she also had needs—needed to combat loneliness mostly. Nothing like an hour spent pretending the skin to skin contact was more than just a passing game fueled by alcohol.

Her path ends right at the backdoor of the Roadhouse. She's able to hear the evening honky-tonk music leaking from the cracks in the wooden walls along with slivers of foggy light. Laughter rumbles, cutting through the sounds of glasses sloshing and crashing, and the unmistakable voice of her mother scolding some wild hunter like a white-hot brand.

Tears prick at the corners of Jo's eyes; she's seen her mom before in Heaven (but not her father, yet) and it was heart-ripping to find out she was just a holographic memory of a time before and not the real thing. However nice it is to see Ellen flicking the same old tongue lashings to the good boys back home, Jo knows that it isn't _real._ She presses the heels of her palm against her eyelids until she spots fireworks. All she wants, goddamn it, is for something _real_—

And then she's pressed on the ground with the wind knocked out her.

"Oh, Jo-Jo, he got you good!" crows a familiar drunken voice.

Another one chimes in, younger and more sober than the first, but just as boisterous, "Come on, kid! Get yourself back up! I got money ridding on you, Jo, so kick your daddy's ass!"

Her vision comes back with her breath. The first thing she notices is she's wearing fire hydrant red overall cutoffs and the Selena concert t-shirt underneath her dad bought her in Texas, and she's wondering what memory this will be.

Then Jo sees _him_.

The air is fresh instead of humid, but he's outlined by the sun that is still setting as it was just a few seconds before. It lights up his blond hair, setting it off like a halo against the clouds, and by god she'd forgotten how tall he was, as tall as the Winchesters, and his eyes are deep and mischievous like her own, but a faded blue color instead of brown.

Her breath is gone all over again.

"Roy. Walter. You both should shut up. Jo can handle her own, right Jo?" and a large brown hand slips out the sunlight and into the shadows near her chest. She grips it tight with one of her own pale hands and lifts off the floor.

Still in wonder, she replies quietly, "Right, Daddy-o."

"It was just where you put that front foot that gave me the upper hand," Bill instructs.

"I know," she murmurs.

"Twenty bucks, kid!"

"Shuddup, Walter!" Jo and Bill holler in chorus. It sets them both off giggling, because her daddy's the type of man who isn't afraid to giggle even if he does look like a lanky, handsome 60s film star who belongs more in westerns and cop dramas than back road Nebraska playing with ghouls and vamps.

The two get back into position. In the shade, Roy and Walt sit on the dirt with one eye on the pair and the other eye on their game of marbles, and when Bill starts moving towards her she feels herself collapsing into a familiar joy.

Almost starts crying again, too, oh god.

When this day happened back on Earth, Jo couldn't have been more than eight, but here she is with her daddy already learning how to fight, and these sparring matches would go on until the back porch light flickered on with a sickly mosquito hiss and even after that, until her mother called the two in with lips pulled up into a smile.

Then Bill would hop up right next to Ellen and pin her against the door frame grinning like a mad fool while his hands lethargically slid to her hips. Her mother wouldn't even put a fight, wouldn't even pretend not to feel Bill's magic working, and her small smile would turn supernova. A loud cackle never failed rip through her body unbridled and organic, and her daddy in turn would take a deep breath (as if trying to keep all his energetic atoms together instead of exploding all over) before leaning down to kiss Ellen glowing.

They had a love story. The true story of how William and Ellen Harvelle loved one another like a cowboy loves his land, like the stars love the night. The true story of two young folks who found each other in the small towns of lost, blue America and brawled evil sons of bitches together before setting up shop in a rundown bar to raise a baby girl with hair the color of daffodils.

Jo knew of their story and how it was abruptly ended by a man named John Winchester.

But she doesn't think too hard about all that while she's sparring with Bill, kicking up dust, and whooping to the bone-colored moon.

**•**

It's been—by her count—four days since she saw her daddy, Roy, or Walt.

One moment she's following them inside the Roadhouse and the next moment she was back on a desolate highway with her car sitting idle. She allowed herself to weep for just five minutes before sitting straight and moving on. Maybe she doesn't understand how Heaven works: why she can't control the flow of flashbacks, where all the other dead souls are, or if she is ever going to be able to escape what felt like a gaping wormhole of yesterdays into a new tomorrow, but she sure as hell can give a single finger salute and keep strong.

_You're name is Joanna Beth Harvelle. You are looking for your mother Ellen, your father Bill, and your—_

The Roadhouse is sitting pretty once more in the frame of windshield. Jo sighs heavy before riding right up to a front door that contains a lot less bullet holes than the one she saw last. She takes her time gliding out of her seat before slamming the car door shut with the clandestine fury that's been boiling for days beneath the surface of her skin. It gets worse every day.

With a hand resting on the screen door, Jo wonders if she should just drive away this time. Skip the bliss of reliving a happy time that never ceases to be followed by the raw rip of illusion that she always is sure to remind herself of.

She takes one step back, ready to go off into the next horizon like a comet afraid of its own tail, when a flash of yellow sails past her right thigh and skids into the bar, the tangy scent of citrus trailing.

Jo takes a peek into the bar and then there she is—little Joanna Beth—clambering onto a hunter's lap while he sits on a bar stool nursing a glass.

Her hands are scraping over his chin, fingers testing out the sensation of his beard, giggling as it tickles. Bobby Singer tugs at one of her pigtails and she shakes her head loose. Palming his eyelids, she asks, "Guess who!"

"Who?" Bobby's legs jiggle beneath her and she teeters for a moment, bottom lip tucked beneath her large front teeth in concentration, before righting herself, meanwhile the real Jo finds a booth in a gloomy corner of the establishment and watches with bated breath, curious.

"You gotta guess!"

"Well, hmm…" he takes a long moment of deliberation and she grows impatient. Young Jo huffs and Bobby chuckles. "Jo Beth, is that you?"

Young Jo howls with joy—literally howling—and slaps her hands against his cheeks.

"I see you're turning into a werewolf again, Joanna," says another voice, tired, but warm. Her gaze turns to the second man, just arrived fresh from the road, blood still sticky on his cuffs and wiping onto the bar. Suddenly shy, Young Jo tucks her head into Bobby's neck and smiles slow enough to make a cold man's heart beat warmth again for just a breath. "Remember me, Jo?"

Young Jo mutters into Bobby's collar, "Don't shoot me full of silver. I'm just playing pretend."

"Just pretend, huh?"

"Yep."

"Well then, ain't you gonna give your favorite uncle a hug? Came all this way to see you."

"Aw, shuddup John, you idjit. I'm her favorite."

It takes a large amount of might to keep her emotions check, to keep the real Jo from smashing bottles and snapping pool sticks. She desires nothing more than to go over to the two men and hug and kiss them tight, tell them both that she loves them, and slap John Winchester across his finely shaped face for leaving her to deal with her daddy's death like he didn't give a damn if her mother survived from the shock, or she lived past day three of being a fatherless ten year old kid.

Sure, Jo grew up and understood why he never came back, and ultimately forgave him just as Ellen had, but her world was turned once over when Bill never came back home from Devil's Gate Reserv—

Forcibly, she moves her scattering attention back to her younger doppelganger clutching the lapels of John's leather coat, or Dean's coat as later became. He's telling her something in a light voice, but his glassy eyes are pained.

"You've got hair like my Mary's."

"Who is your Mary?"

"She's my wife."

Bobby ain't even looking in their direction, but Jo can hear him muttering something, and it takes a moment to decipher his grumbles. Suddenly, the pieces fall together, clattering loudly in her mind and she comprehends what she hadn't been aware of at the time—that already John is on his merry way to being drunk.

"John—"

"Bobby, how have you been doing?" interrupts John. Young Jo is spinning the rings on his fingers not paying much attention to the obvious tension that's arisen between the two hunters.

"Good. The boys?"

"Fine."

"John, Elle'll be back soon, and I'm sure she won't appreciate you being half whisky mush while handling her kid—"

The Winchester is tipping her head back as Bobby speaks, and whispers (warm and musky breath she can recall, stinky, too), "Mary had brown eyes just like you, Jo."

"Like me?"

Jo takes the stool by John and watches carefully. She sees how nice and affectionate John treats her, and how soft Bobby's frown becomes once he sees that his friend isn't treating her bad, or emotionally endangering himself, but mostly she gazes at the naivety her face reflects. This timeline version of Jo knows about vengeful spirits, werewolves, and that there are definitely no monsters beneath her bed, because her daddy checked, and that's his job. But those are just the facts of life, no more threatening than bull sharks in Mississippi, or tornados tearing up the U.S. plains. There were ways to avoid or eliminate the danger. Her father and mom knew how to do that, along with all the 'uncles' who passed through the Roadhouse.

The innocence found in the face of the Jo who sat on John's lap was passing, but pure, and Jo finally understood that maybe she never lost that pearly shine that kept her unafraid of death, but focused on helping others, focused on finding her father in every hunter and every job.

Tentatively reaching out, Jo pushes a loose strand of hair out of her younger self's face, and gradually slides a finger to flick away a piece of tangerine pulp from the apple of her cheek before running out of the only home she's ever really known with the strangers she liked to call family.

**•**

The next step she takes past the screen door she stops feeling the Nebraska summer warmth. She knows she's in a different recollection and curses the fact that she has to find her car all over again. It's exasperating.

Striding quickly down a sloppily decorated hallway, Jo doesn't even pause to consider where she is.

"Bye, Jo," someone says to her left. It's firm.

She doesn't turn her head, but she pauses and says her line, "Bye, Abby," then tentatively—because it was the absolute truth and telling the absolute truth is difficult—"you were my best friend."

And she's supposed to continue on her merry way out the doors of her dorm building at Nebraska State where she spent two years living in misery holed up in her room researching for the future hunts she dreamt about and going to frat parties where she practiced easy short cons on the drunk freshmen who loitered there looking for acceptance. Classes were dull. The people were nice for a semester until a team of assholes looking for Jo's roommate walked in on her sharpening a couple of her knives in her rattiest Black Sabbath t-shirt, a pair of Ash's boxers and nothing else. Needless to say, the guys were simultaneously turned on and spooked at the blond chick with long legs surrounded by sharp objects. In the end their cocks won out, and they began needling her, asking her if she was freaky in bed too, and if so, could they maybe all have a spin.

They were half-stoned, the sticky scent of weed slipping off their clothing and traveling straight into her nose along with the familiar scents of different liquor brands, and all the boys stood very big and towering over her bed. A hint of panic pinched the back of her spine, but Jo knew of worse things than four horny bastards hovering around her, so she talked to them sweet like she'd been talking to all the men at the bar since she was fifteen and "experienced", a real Lolita with a shotgun and thirst for information. It all would have gone down fine except one idiot was actually bold enough to sling out his half hard dick and that set her temper off like fireworks on the Fourth. The boys hadn't known who they were dealing with.

One week later and maybe it was her imagination, but Jo was eyeballed and laughed at from all corner of the cafeteria, the quad, every classroom, and even the goddamn library.

_Freak with the knife collection_—that was the nice moniker. The ugly ones she kept quiet and calm about, quiet and pained. Always the freak.

For the next year and half, there were only a handful of people Jo could count on as friends. They were the other misfits: wandering, wondering, and attempting to find others they could bond with. There was one girl especially who didn't mind Jo's reputation or the rumors, because those were the sort of things she didn't trust. Her name was Abby Denson from South Dakota. She wore tortoise shell frames, touted H. P. Lovecraft paperbacks and Hemingway novels, wore her hair down, and sometimes forgot to put on a bra. The girl was sweet and laid-back—less stress and street-smarts than anyone Jo had ever met in her life, and couldn't help thinking that Abby wouldn't last a day in the life of a hunter. But Abby was quick with words, intelligent, and open-minded which was all Jo could ask for in a friend and it the novelty of actually having a girl friend to share her thoughts and secrets with was surprisingly great.

Of course, it wasn't meant to last, neither college, nor a friendship with someone so inherently good that Jo couldn't bring herself to confess the parts of her life that would destroy Abby's innocence.

"I _am _your best friend," Abby had murmured.

Jo hadn't turned back that day, no way, but there was something this time around in this heavenly hallucination that caused Jo to swing lightly around to glance at Abby one last time and immediately she wishes hadn't—she wishes she could erase the hurt, abandoned look on Abby's kind face.

**•**

"You may be a genius, Ash, but sometimes you can be real idiot."

"Jo, I can't be held responsible for all my actions after the Incident of 1998. You know that."

"Well excuse me for having a hard time believing that the fumes of crashed computer left you with a high that still affects your ability to wear clothes."

"Hehe, fuck yeah _hard_time—"

"Ash! Seriously?"

"Sorry, but you bust into my room during a private viewing of Casa Erotica's _SweeTarts_and expect me to be fully dressed?"

"Oh, god, what the hell are they putting in her—"

"Sweet Tarts candy, yum!"

"Thus the name of the video."

Ash takes a swig of beer from his frosty can and readjusts his fraying silk bathrobe.

"Listen up, Jo, I'm going to be frank with you. Little Ash will be making another appearance and—"

"Can girls really do that? Look, she's squirting. How do you know she's not pissing herself?"

"I think it might be time that you leave."

"Whoa! Talented woman!"

"Joanna Beth. If Ellen catches you in here…and with me…aw, she'll have my skinny ass…"

"I wonder if I—"

"Fuck, Jo, a gentleman has needs and I cannot sort them out with you in here, alright. There are some skin mags underneath the bed over there. Take them. Do your research or whatever, but I cannot spank the monkey with you watching and talking like we're watching fucking Animal Planet."

Jo tears her eyes from the screen and gives him a winking nod.

"Alright, alright. I'm leaving. Let me just…_Busty Asian Beauties?_ I'm more of a vintage _Playboy_girl myself—"

"Hello sweet tarts, Little Ash is coming on out to play!"

"Shit! Bye!"

**•**

"MOM!"

Ellen turns in time to see the shovel flying straight towards her head. She swivels clear, the tool missing her head by centimeters. She glances back at her daughter with wide eyes.

"Your welcome," Jo cockily grins and tosses the Zippo into the freshly dug up grave where the bones of a murderous farmer lay salted and drenched in lighter fluid. A terrible screech breaks through the still of the Idaho night as the spirit's bones are consumed by fire.

Ellen stalks over with a grim half smile, but doesn't say anything in response.

It is the first time Jo saves her mother's hide on a hunt, and it certainly isn't the last. They help each other, a solid though sometimes tense team. But now that she's dead, it becomes clear to Jo how much she has grown, because nowadays she sure as hell wouldn't be grinning like a green, inexperienced idiot about Ellen's brush with death in a potato field. Death is real and whole and permanent for most ordinary folks—the _extraordinary_Winchesters aside.

The Harvelle family just doesn't have that kind of special to their souls.

**•**

The next stop on memory lane—

It's Veteran's Day in some salvage yard outside of Sioux Falls. Her mom's unceremoniously dumped her here to help out an old friend up by the border. At thirteen, Ellen thinks Jo is too young to stay at the Roadhouse by her lonesome, and she's been in the life long enough to be suspicious of the neighbors. There are few people she'd let take care of Jo, and one of them just happens to live close to the hunting action that Ellen can't avoid. Her mother closes up shop and takes Jo to Singer's property.

Bobby Singer, her mom tells her on the ride over, used to be a regular at their saloon, but something happened with him and his partner in Missouri and since then he's become a paranoid reclusive alcoholic bastard. Still a good man, Ellen quickly adds, the best a hunter can be in these times. Jo kicks her bare feet up on the dashboard and lets her head roll against the window. She's understandably sour at the prospect of being left behind.

"You know, Jo, you loved Bobby a great deal way back when."

"Don't remember."

Her mother sighs. "Baby, look, I'm just trying to do the right thing here. Trying to keep you safe and sound, so, yeah, that means leaving your ass at Bobby Singer's."

Jo tries not letting her face slip away from an angry expression because the one underneath is full is fear and worry. Last time one of her parents went on a hunt his seat came back empty. Wanting to stay with her mother isn't a form of rebellion, it's a way to be _sure_, but Jo keeps face and pretends.

When they arrive, Bobby's waiting on his porch steps to greet them, two open beers in hand.

Ellen grabs one immediately and takes a gulp. "Watery," she deadpans and then hands her bottle to Jo. As someone who was never allowed to touch the alcohol, Jo looked at Ellen questioningly before taking what is as what is and taking a swig herself. Her mom's right. The bottle is just full of water and she can't help but look disappointed.

Bobby notices and almost smiles.

"Four days?" he asks.

"Make it three and a half. Can't be too long," Ellen supplies.

"Bedtime?"

"Kid's thirteen now, Bobby."

"Balls. She need any of that feminine stuff?"

"You can relax; she ain't a woman yet."

"Good. What if she cries?'

"Let her call me. She knows the number of the motel, the hospital, and the police station."

"Allergies?"

"Yeah—allergic to common sense."

"Can't be worse than some of the other midgets I look after."

"She's not all bad."

By this time, Jo's playing with Bobby's big black beast of a dog and talking to it like they're already best friends. The dog in turn drools on her boots and licks the back of her hand.

"Well, if Rumsfeld likes the kid, then I guess you're right; she can't be all that bad."

"She looks like him, doesn't she?"

"Elle…she's growing up pretty."

It's Veteran's Day two days later and she's bored to hell. Bobby's been handing someone's screw up with the local law over the phone by pretending to be the F.B.I. and the C.E.O. of a major corporation in Japan. All day it's been yelling a bunch of legal crap in a Batman voice and then a lot of furious Japanese. She worries he'll keel over any moment, dead from an aneurysm or at the very least give himself an ulcer.

When he's not solving that idiot's problems, Bobby tries to be polite and accommodating, but he trips over his words and blushes. Then Jo blushes for making this man she apparently adored when she was younger act like a fool over nothing, and then the cycle goes on and on until Jo locks herself up in the room she's residing in and reads the whole history of Wicca according to some deranged Catholic priest named Montague Summers and then the Nancy Drew paperbacks she'd packed.

Bobby's dog sits at the foot of her bed after Jo secretly unleashed him and the two of them wait for the ringing and roaring to stop downstairs.

Around four o'clock, Jo's eating half a PB&J sandwich and is feeding the other half to Rumsfeld when she hears, "Hello? Sam?...Oh, quit your moaning, boy! So what if I thought you were your brother?...yeah, yeah, your voice is so deep you should runaway and join Z.Z. Top…that was a joke, you idjit! Don't get any more ideas…let me talk—Dean, quiet—let me talk to your dad…John? DEAN! I swear to…John, that boy of yours…what do I want? What the sweet cunt do you think I want John!? A thank you maybe? I'm supposed to be looking after Elle Harvelle's kid and you went and left an Exxon Valdez sized clean-up for me…yes, Joanna Beth's here and she's fine, thanks for askin'. She's growing up fast. Looks like Billy sometimes, but stop tryin' to distract me!...Don't tell me it wasn't _that bad_, friend, 'cause it was so bad I wondered if you were giving some of the grifter shit to Dean…ah, hell, John! He isn't ready for that kind of recon!...well, excuse me for stepping on your kitten heels, but I ain't your girlfriend! I tell you like it is, and guess what!...nope, but you can't even think about setting foot in that part of Nevada again!..."

The conversation went on a little longer, but by then Jo had already grown cold at the mention of the last man to see her daddy standing.

**•**

It's Veteran's Day, the evening of it anyway, and people are popping fireworks a couple miles out. She's sitting on the rusted roof of an old lime Pinto. Rumsfeld is settled on the hood, the metal puckering under his weight. The radio works, but the music is more static than 'Greasy Heart'. Bobby's asleep, she thinks, but he may have just been trying to avoid her. He left her cereal and milk in the kitchen at least, except the milk was whole instead of the 2% she and Ellen drink. It was just a small detail, but the feeling of homesickness hit her in the gut at that moment and she'd run outside to the comfort of the open air.

Now, Jo's thinking a bit too hard and about too much (John Winchester, her daddy, the thing Ellen's hunting, the kids at her school, the boy she has a crush on, her future), and things are starting to swell big, overwhelming, so much so it's getting hard to breathe again and she thinks this what they call a panic attack, or she's just really dying. Maybe, Jo ponders painfully, maybe she's rotting from the inside out, and the hole she knows exists inside is gaping further. Is that possible?

"Rumsfeld, we gotta get out of here! I can't be here! I got to help Mom!" she gasps upright. The fireworks sound louder while shining radiantly right above their heads so the junkyard glows and Rumsfeld howls. "I can't—oh god—what's the matter with me? I can't—I can't b-breathe. We gotta—I have to go! I want my mom! My—I need my mom!"

Jo's daddy taught her how to hot-wire a car in secret from her mama, but there was no need to put that skill set to the test. As she scurried into the driver's seat of the Pinto, Jo found the key already stuck in the ignition. She twists and the car putters to life, already wheezing like an asthmatic junkie, so sickly and wasted she worries that they won't make it out of the yard, let alone make the miles to her mother. "Come on, baby, come on, baby, come on! Come on!"

Rumsfeld takes that as his cue to lumber in through the busted front windshield whining about either the broken glass, the fireworks, Jo's wild state, or all of the above. But he settles into the passenger seat and looks over at Jo. She takes it as her cue to hit the gas. The car creaks laboriously, but slides forward all the while Jo's still talking in circles to herself. She stutters and sobs and grips the wheel tight enough to snap it like a pretzel when she realizes that, yes, her daddy taught her how to start a car without a key, but no one's ever taught her how to drive.

"Oh Jesus Christ—oh—I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to do anything. Where am I going? Where the hell—oh CHRIST, calm down Jo! Breath! I still can't breath—right! Rumsfeld! We're gunna DIE!" _POP. POP. _The sky lights up again. The dog howls over the roar of the wind, the static, and Jimi singing 'Hey Joe'. "I want my mom NOW."

She's _wailing_. The Pinto's creaks turn into little screams as she pushes the peddle to the floor and sails down the dark highway lit only by the moon, a smattering of South Dakota stars and the fireworks the neighbors insist on popping. The wind smacks her sharply in the face and dries her snot and tears before they make it to her mouth, but it doesn't matter, because she's spitting onto her chin as she cries out, her voice tearing away when it reaches the nonexistent windshield.

"She can't leave me! She can't leave me here all—all alone! MAMA! Oh god, I'm gunna die. It hurts m—my chest—I can't see DAMN IT! F—FUCK! SCREW YOU—I mean—SCREW EVERYTHI—I can't. I can't, Mama."

With that last call for her mother, Jo finds she can't go on.

Coming to a halting stop in the middle of an adjacent dirt road, Jo reaches over to the big black hound and pushes her face into his warm neck. Her arms wrap around his body and grip him tight. He licks her ear in compliance, shuffling a bit back towards to the door, so when she climbs onto his seat there is enough room for the two of them. It takes her a moment to realize that they're moving forward and laughs though her tears as she awkwardly sets the emergency brake and puts the car in park from her position. Rumsfeld takes advantage of the distraction to start slobbering all over her face, his slick blue tongue lapping up all the dried goop.

Jo laughs even louder and the pressing weight on her breast alleviates just a bit, enough to where she can finally feel her lungs fill with enough air, and her heart expands with them.

She returns to hiding in Rumsfeld's fur, breathing in the dusty, smoky smell of dog, and he, to his credit, ceases to lick and patiently rests his head on the crown of her own. They both heave a sigh.

**•**

Bobby rolls up in his pick-up not even half an hour later. Silently, he hooks up the car as Jo ashamedly folds out the door with his dog. The two slip into the truck and listen to the eerie stillness that came upon the night. The crackle of Bobby's steps on the pebbly dirt sound about as loud as the fireworks from before.

"Your mom's gunna kill me, kid." He says this after he slams the door shut.

She finds her voice and knows it will sound small, "You don't have to tell her."

"You know I do." More goddamn silence. "What in God's name were you thinking, Jo?"

It dawns on her that this is the first time Bobby's addressed her by her name (and her nickname at that). "I wasn't."

"No, you weren't. I was worried sick, kid, wondering where you and that damn dog had gone off too. Took me forever to notice that that lime heap was missing."

"How'd you know where I was?"

He murmurs with something like sadness and maybe affection, "I just knew where'd you be headed is all…family's real hard to let go of, Jo."

**•**

Bobby does this thing where he almost tucks her into bed, but doesn't really finish the movements, so she picks up the slack and lets him off the hook. The poor man just keeps doing it though: reaches for the covers and then drops them abruptly, takes the books strewn out on her bed and then sets them back down on the mattress, closes the threadbare curtains, but abandons them before the two pieces of fabric meet.

"I, uh—"

"It's okay." She thinks she understands.

"—I don't know how to be a father to a little girl."

"I ain't asking for one."

He finally meets her eyes knowing something beyond her own grasp and it hurts; it really, really does. "You sure?"

Rumsfeld whines at the foot of the bed when Bobby turns out the light and shuts the door.

"Nope," she whispers and it's the day after Veteran's Day, but it feels like a new year with all this warmth in her soul for a drunk and his beast they call a dog.

**•**

Jo wakes up. There is no rippling pain in her abdomen. There is no trailing trace of smoke clinging to the air and her mouth for once tastes immediately like sleep and spearmint. The metallic flavor on her tongue is gone.

_I'm Jo. _

The bed she lies in is wholly familiar and it takes her by surprise at how right it feels to be lying in it. For years she tried to run away from this bed, break down the walls of this room, and go forth to assert her independence. Yet here she is stretching beneath the moonlight in the cool blue cotton sheets like a contented cat, hazy, lazy, wanting nothing more than to sink into the mattress and never leave.

This is home. Home is where her dirty softball uniform is thrown haphazardly over her hand-me down b.b. gun, where old liquor bottles with the necks cut clean off stand in a colorful line on her windowsill (a thick salt line running in front and between each bottle) and they're filled with soil and blooming flowers. Home is where a wendigo tooth strung up on a leather cord is wrapped around the closet doorknob, and where postcards take up one whole wall—most from her daddy, quite a few from friendly hunters who sent one or two for kicks, and some of them, real old ones, she just found at the local flea market and took a liking to the message or the picture.

Taking in the sights of her old room makes Jo downright jovial and when she hears laughter coming from down the hall, she can't stop herself from skipping right out of bed and making her way to the lit kitchen.

The room is cozy, but outdated. The appliances are robin's egg blue and sea foam green with rust crawling up the sides and the light above the table flickers not due to ghostly visitors, but from age. The breakfast table is a new oak build, but the chairs all are mismatched and funky. Despite its worn appearance, the kitchen smells clean, fresh, and a tiny bit like pecan pie.

Family were the only folks allowed back in the Harvelle's personal kitchen and it was a rare moment that they let any old uncouth hunter lounge against their sink. Any guest taking up cot space was welcome to the bar and the goods that came from the saloon, but their space was their space, and it didn't matter none that Billy had kind eyes, because they flickered to dangerous in about a millisecond the moment his territory was encroached upon. Plus, they all were familiar with the hard line of Ellen's frown.

But John Winchester was considered family.

He had automatic access—not that he ever used it—and yet on this night he sits at their breakfast table adjacent to his friend Bill (who is sitting on a bongo), and opposite Bill's wife who grips a bottle of cheap wine between both hands. They are all talking animatedly over the dim hum of the radio, Bill in the most charmingly cartoonish way making Ellen swat the back of his blond head and John leans back in the metal chair and chuckles warmly to the ceiling, "You son of a bitch."

Her daddy notices her leaning drowsily against the doorframe first and instead of the mega-watt smile Jo expected and originally remembered, his eyes flicker first to Ellen and then sadly to the organized mess of books and papers they created on the table before finally finding her eyes again. His voice though does not betray whatever thoughts ramble on through his head, because his tone is full cheery grins. He says, "Sleeping beauty's up, Mr. Winchester. You should watch your mouth. Go get the soap, sweetheart!"

Jo giggles and runs to the open seat. Her feet pound softly of the hardwood floor. Resting her chin on the heel of one hand, she gazes at all the frightening pictures in an old book. There's a shadowy man with a string of fire for a tongue and curling sharp horns dripping blood. She is tracing the flick of his tail and eyes the way he's standing on hooves instead of feet when John reaches over and snatches the book away. He slams it shut and coughs when a cloud of dust rushes at his face. Jo bites her bottom lip. He doesn't meet her eyes.

"That ain't for kids."

She bites her lip harder. "I ain't a kid."

John glances up from the cover to her daddy's tired face. Bill stares at Jo like she's made of porcelain or it looks like how he gets straight after she gives him a smooch on the lips—the way he looks when she holds his fingers between hers and tells him she loves him. Like she's precious and perfect. Like she's worth a damn and half. Like she's got a something to give.

Her daddy tells her, "You're a child. Joanna. You're _my_ child. My baby girl, so-" and oh god, this is the night before John takes her daddy to the west coast, to California where all the movie stars live, and this isn't the story where a film producer spots his beatific Robert Redford face and gets a job as an actor, because she's told that one before. No, this late night cram session was the last evening she ever has with either man. When she wakes up tomorrow morning, he'll be loading up guns and John will be talking on the landline to someone. Bill will call out, "_Dynamite's ready, Butch_," and then hop over to Ellen who will be leaning up against the passenger door with a suspicious look on her face.

"Elle," he'll murmer, "I'll be back."

"You'd better, jackass."

"I will, sweetheart, I promise."

"I'm holding that promise closer than the word of God."

"You don't believe in God."

"Yeah, Billy, but you do. I love you."

And Bill will tug her close, tangle the fingers of one hand in her hair, slip the other hand up her back to grip a petite shoulder and then bend to hide his face in the crook of her neck, and her mama will clasp him to her tightly. He'll gasp as if he's about to cry, inhaling her scent, the way she smelled like booze and wildflowers in those days, and kiss the underside of her jaw over and over again wetly and with ardor until he find her lips.

John will stride out and slam the screen door. Her parents won't even notice anything beyond what's happening between their bodies, and he'll glance down towards her as she waits on the porch steps. Jo will smile up at him tentatively, shutting her eyes pleasantly when his rough finger brushes against the crown of her head. John will say simply, "Be good, Jo," and awkwardly walk to the driver's door.

Finally, her daddy will come over to her and she'll jump up into his open arms. "Don't go."

"Joanna, I have to help Uncle John with some business, but I'll be back."

"Ganking nasties?"

"Where do you get this stuff, kid?" he'll laugh softly while smoothing out the worry lines on her forehead. "But you know I don't lie to you, so yes, Jo, I'm going to a gank a big, important nasty."

"Oh. Be careful. Love you like a cowboy loves his land."

"Love you like the stars love the night…are you going to cry?"

"Nope."

"_Oh, good_," he will quote through a tenderly yearning smile, "_For a moment there I thought we were in trouble_."

But she does cry. She cries for years.

**•**

Bill Harvelle was a selfish conman that could talk until he changed the perception of what was right and what was wrong. He was a hell of friend with a magnetic presence that lulled you into a sense of comradeship, thrilled by his never-ending curiosity and childlike grins. He was broken man who did his goddamned best to rid the plains of evil, because he knew what evil could do to a boy in a tin trailer with a shit-faced father, or to a teen-aged young man seeing a person he's supposed to call 'Charlie' get blown to bits by a landmine in the war. He was a loving husband and father to two of the toughest girls America had given birth to, but not recognized, and he knew this and for them he pulled out his heart and wore it on his sleeve with devotion.

Her daddy's cons and lies and hurts never entered their doorway, but he let John Winchester's in that night, let his festering, blind thirst for vengeance into his kitchen and let himself be pulled into what they all desperately feared was a fool's mission.

She _hated_ John Winchester for this night at the table and fucking Heaven didn't know what it was doing with her by bringing that memory up.

_"That ain't for kids."_

He was right.

**•**


End file.
